Mindlessly musing. Mindfully meandering.

Tag Archives: decision

You need to decide now, but your faculties have disappeared. You’re a robot with a glitch, you’re broken. You have a choice between left and right and you continue straight, and even after impact has been made and metal is crunching and glass is shattering, you’re waiting for a heavenly voice to tell you exactly what to do.

You’re still alternating between choices as the dirt approaches your nose. You think you’ve got it, you finally make a decision, and as you come up with a story supporting it, you regret it, you dramatically change your mind at the last second. The dirt is in your mouth, you can no longer see, and you cheerfully explain your new decision to the crying faces looking down at you, and you secretly long for the other choice, yes you, already dead sir, and you still waver in your grave infinitely. You are an idiot.

I watch a movie. I find myself not really paying close attention to it; my mind is wandering, it’s somewhere else. I catch bits and pieces of the movie, and bits and pieces of my mind. Shortly afterwards, if someone asks me about the movie, I can’t say much. I don’t remember any details at all. Then they ask what I was doing. What was I doing? What was I thinking? At least if I was daydreaming, I would have been using my mind for something, I would have gotten some utility out of it. But I find that I was neither watching the movie nor thinking about anything at all. My mind was taking a random walk, with no aim, no developed thoughts. I feel so frustrated that I can’t at least remember some of the movie. It’s like, I not only was just wasting my time sitting on the couch watching something I didn’t really want to watch, but I wasn’t even watching it. I could have been sitting in a dark room doing nothing, staring at a blank wall. I feel useless and stupid.

It’s been like this for years, and not just with movies. With school, work, people, etc.

I guess you could say I’m “neither here nor there.” Literally.

I don’t want to be here in the moment doing much of what I am doing, but what do I want to be doing? Why did I choose this exact path, anyway? I can blame a large portion of it on the ADD, but that still leaves part of it on me. As I’ve been realizing lately, I have made so many decisions based on boredom and confusion, and that’s where I went wrong. I want to be sure about decisions in the first place. I don’t really choose to do anything; I just do it because it’s there, except with sports and competition. In every second of my day, I want to be playing sports or doing something competitive and active and physical. I can not only enjoy myself and get some exercise, but I can live in the moment. I choose that. I wish I could have that same “making a choice” feeling at any other time. Any other time in life. That is my problem right now. I find myself almost 25, and I never wanted to make the choices I did in the first place, so what now? Quit what I am doing? Start something completely different? I have one part of the problem down, knowing this isn’t where I want to be. I just need to figure out the alternatives that work for me.

Everything I do feels like settling or wasting time. I believe that I’m meant for something much better / different, or that maybe I don’t want to be tied down by anything in life. If I’m going to find something, I don’t want to be doing something else that doesn’t contribute to my end goal. I have extremely high expectations – I want progress. And if I am going to be a drifter, I want it to be a choice. I want to be able to say, “I choose to do this random thing and not get tied down by it. I don’t have to do this for the rest of my life (in terms of a career). I might like it, I might not.” And I would be able to move to the next thing I choose to do, and so on. But this is aimless wandering. I choose from alternatives when I want neither. I just settle and wander and don’t really choose anything. Or I tell myself I strongly want to do something even though I know that is not true, that I am just trying to back my own decision up. Then when I don’t want to do it anymore shortly after, I get depressed and question my initial decision and sometimes quit, or I continue doing it halfheartedly (for me, that is quarterheartedly, since I have already started things halfheartedly). Then I feel like a quitter and an idiot. Then I do something crazy, like move across the USA or go on a long drive or go to Europe or start something completely different (that I don’t really want to do) to say I’m doing something. I want things to be choices in the first place. What I am doing is not really choosing; it is just going with the random flow. I need to find out what Curtis chooses to do.

It’s like I just entered into the world. I woke up and found myself in a specific position, with no information or idea as to what got me here.

This is how I feel. I have a lot of things to make up for. I have a lot of things to figure out. Maybe I will continue doing some of the things I am doing, and maybe I will reverse some of the decisions I made before. I want to set the course right from here, but it’s not going to be easy to match the past up with the future. I’ll do my best, though. And, honestly, I’m having a lot of fun (at times) doing this. I’m living. I might be confused, but I’m trying to deal with that confusion like I would deal with a complex math problem. It’s a puzzle, and I love puzzles. In a few years, let’s say I have things in order. I might look back on this time and wish I were here again, solving this riddle, just beginning to figure myself out. I might be bored without this challenge.

I just hope that I’m not too far behind, that I don’t have to settle on something because I can’t go back to junior high again and start all over. There is only so much lost time a person can make up for. I do truly believe people can do anything they set their minds to, but it’s impossible to ignore the impact of surroundings and circumstances. I could not afford (both financially and temporally) to go back to school and become a doctor (if that is what I wanted to do). I couldn’t become a professional race car driver now because I didn’t get into it when I was younger. I can’t go to the NBA anymore because I stopped playing varsity basketball in high school. Et cetera.

In spite of these hindrances, I have plenty of time. I might be 24, but I can still do a heck of a lot of good with my life. It’s not like I have absolutely nothing to work with; I have my mind, my intuition, my special skills, my great friends, and my supportive family. I am confident that I will start doing things I want to do. I will make the most out of whatever decisions I make, and I will choose something in life to do without settling. This goes for career-related decisions, hobbies, interests, friends, and anything else that I can choose. It won’t be easy, but I’m looking forward to being involved in my own choices for a change.

And when someone asks me about the movie I just watched, maybe I’ll actually be able to tell them what happened.